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  “What?” he asked.

  “Ricky, I can see you’re going to need my help considerably over the next few days if you intend to make an honest effort to save your own life. Or do you prefer to sit in the dark right up to the arrival of the day that you have to kill yourself?”

  He felt confused.

  “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “You will in a moment or two,” she said firmly. Then she hung up, leaving him holding impotently on to the telephone. He took several seconds before he returned it to its cradle. The nighttime in the room seemed to envelop him, blanketing him with despair. He reviewed Virgil’s words, which seemed to him to be obtuse, cryptic, and unfathomable. He wanted to scream out that he had no idea what she meant, frustrated by both the darkness that surrounded him and the sense that his private space had been disrupted and violated. Ricky ground his teeth in anger, gripping the edge of the desk, grunting with rage. He wanted to pick something up and break it.

  “A simple trail,” he almost shouted out. “There aren’t any simple trails in life!”

  The sound of his own words disappearing into the blackened room had the immediate effect of quieting him. He seethed, on the verge of fury.

  “Simple, simple . . . ,” he said under his breath.

  And then he had an idea. He was surprised that it managed to slide past his growing anger. “It can’t be . . .” he said, as he reached out with his left hand for his desk lamp. He felt the base and found the electrical cord emerging from the side. Holding this between his fingers, he traced the wire downward to where he knew it was plugged into an extension cord that ran against the wall to the outlet. He lowered himself to his knees on the floor and within a few seconds found the plug. It had been pulled from the extension. It took another few seconds of groping around for him to find the end of the extension, but he managed. He slid the plug into the receptacle and the room around him suddenly burst with light. He rose from the floor and turned to the lamp behind the couch and immediately saw that it had been unplugged, as well. He lifted his eyes to the overhead light and guessed that the bulb behind the sconce had merely been loosened.

  On his desk, the telephone rang for the third time.

  He picked it up, demanding “How did you get in here?”

  “Don’t you think Mr. R. can afford a capable locksmith?” Virgil said coyly. “Or a professional burglar? Someone expert with the antique and outmoded dead-bolt locks you have on your front door, Ricky. Haven’t you ever considered something more modern? Electrical locking systems with lasers and infrared motion detectors? Handprint technology, or maybe even those eyeball retina recognition systems they use at government installations. You know that sort of thing is available to the general public through slightly shady and disreputable connections. Haven’t you ever had the urge to be slightly more modern in your personal security?”

  “I’ve never needed that foolishness,” Ricky harrumphed pompously.

  “Never had a break-in? Never been robbed? Not in all these years in Manhattan?”

  “No.”

  “Well,” Virgil said smugly, “I guess no one ever thought you had something worth stealing. But that’s not the case now, is it, doctor? My employer certainly does, and he seems more than willing to take all sorts of chances.”

  Ricky did not reply. He looked up abruptly, staring out the office window.

  “You can see me,” he said excitedly. “You’re looking at me right now, aren’t you? How else would you know that I managed to get the lights on?”

  Virgil burst into a laugh. “Good for you, Ricky. You’re making some progress when finally able to state the obvious.”

  “Where are you?” Ricky asked.

  Virgil paused, before replying: “Close by. I’m at your shoulder, Ricky. I’m in your shadow. What good would it be to have a guide to Hell who wasn’t there when you needed her?”

  He didn’t have an answer.

  “Well,” Virgil continued, her voice returning to the lilting tones that Ricky was beginning to find irritating, “let me give you a little hint, doctor. Mr. R. is a sporting type. With all the planning that has gone into this modest exercise in revenge, do you think he would be unwilling to play his game with rules that you couldn’t perceive? What did you learn tonight, Ricky?”

  “I learned that you and your employer are sick, disgusting people,” Ricky burst out. “And I want nothing to do with you.”

  Virgil’s laugh over the telephone line was cold and flat.

  “Is that what you learned? And how did you reach that particular conclusion? Now, I’m not denying it, mind you. But I’d be interested to know under what psychoanalytic or medical theory you arrived at that diagnosis when it seems to my untrained mind that you don’t know us at all. Why, you and I, we’ve had only one session. And you still have no clue as to who Rumplestiltskin is, do you? But you’re willing to jump to all sorts of conclusions. Why, Ricky, I think jumping to conclusions is dangerous for you, given the precariousness of your position. I think you should try to keep an open mind.”

  “Zimmerman . . . ,” he started with his own version of a mingling of cold and fury. “What happened to Zimmerman? You were there. Did you push him off the platform? Did you give him a little shove, or maybe just a jostle, so that he lost his balance? Do you think you can get away with murder?”

  Virgil hesitated, then answered bluntly, “Yes, Ricky, I do. I think people in this day and age get away with all sorts of crimes, up to and including murder. Happens all the time. But in the case of your unfortunate patient—or should I say ex-patient?—the evidence is far stronger that he jumped. Are you absolutely sure he didn’t? No secret that he was deeply troubled. What makes you think he didn’t do himself in, using a fabulously inexpensive and efficient technique not all that uncommon in New York? A method you might soon be forced to consider yourself. Not all that terrible a way to go when you really think about it. A momentary feeling of fear and doubt, a decision, a single brave step off the platform, some screeching noise, a flash of light, and then blessed oblivion.”

  “Zimmerman wouldn’t kill himself. He showed none of the classic conditions. You or someone like you pushed him in front of that subway train.”

  “I admire your certainty, Ricky. It must be a happy life to be so sure about everything.”

  “I’m going to go back to the police.”

  “Well, you’re certainly welcome to give them another try if you think it will do you some good. Did you find them particularly helpful? Were they especially eager to listen to your analytic interpretation of events that you didn’t actually witness?”

  This question quieted Ricky. He waited before he said, “All right. So, what’s next?”

  “There’s a present for you. Over on your couch. See it?”

  Ricky looked up swiftly and saw that there was a medium-sized blond manila envelope resting where his patients usually placed their heads. “I see it,” he replied.

  “Okay,” Virgil said. “I’ll wait for you to open it up.” Before he could place the telephone down on the desktop, he heard her humming a tune that he vaguely recognized, but was unable to immediately place. Had Ricky been more of a television watcher, he might have immediately determined that Virgil was using the familiar music from the quiz show Jeopardy. Instead, he rose, crossed the room swiftly, and seized the envelope. It was thin, and he tore it open rapidly, removing a single sheet of paper.

  It was a solitary page from a calendar. A large red X had been drawn through that day’s date, the first of the month of August. Thirteen days that followed were left blank. The fifteenth day was circled in red. The remaining days of the month had been blacked out.

  Ricky’s mouth went dry. He looked in the envelope, but there was nothing else.

  He moved slowly back to the desk and lifted the receiver.

  “All right,” he said. “This isn’t hard to understand.”

  Virgil’s voice remained even flowing and almost sweet. “A reminde
r, Ricky. That’s all. Something to help you get yourself started. Ricky, Ricky, I asked already: What have you learned?”

  The question infuriated him and he was about to burst with outrage. But he bit back the fury gathering within him and, keeping tight rein over his emotions, replied instead, “I’ve learned that there don’t seem to be any boundaries.”

  “Good, Ricky, good. That’s progress. What else?”

  “I’ve learned not to underestimate what is happening.”

  “Excellent, Ricky. More?”

  “No. That’s it to this point.”

  Virgil started to tsk-tsk like some caricature of a grade-school teacher. “Not true, Ricky. What you have learned, Ricky, is that everything in this game, including the likely outcome, is being played on a field uniquely designed to accommodate you. I think that my employer has been exceptionally generous, considering his alternatives. You’ve been given a chance, granted a slight one, to save someone else’s life and to save your own by answering a simple question: Who is he? And, because he doesn’t want to be unfair, he’s given you an alternative solution, less attractive for you, of course, but one that will give your sorry existence some meaning in your final days. Not many people get that sort of opportunity, Ricky. To go to their grave knowing that their sacrifice saved another from some unknown, but absolutely genuine horror. Why, this borders on sainthood, Ricky, and it’s being handed to you without the delightful three miracles that the Catholic Church usually requires, although I believe they’ll waive one or two on occasion for worthy candidates. How does one go about waiving a miracle, when that’s the standard for acceptance in the club? Ah, well, an intriguing question we can debate at length some other moment. Right now, Ricky, you should go back to the clues you have been given, and get started. Time is wasting and there’s not much of it left. Have you ever performed an analysis on deadline, Ricky? Because that is what this is all about. I’ll be in touch. Remember, Virgil is never far away.”

  She took a deep breath, then added: “Got all that, Ricky?”

  He remained silent, and she said it again, harsher.

  “Got all that, Ricky?”

  “Yes,” he said. But of course he knew that he didn’t as he hung up the phone.

  Chapter Seven

  Zimmerman’s ghost seemed to be laughing at him.

  It was the morning after a fitful night. He had not slept much, but when he had, he had dreamed vividly, fantastically, of his dead wife sitting by his side in a vibrant red two-seater sports car that he did not recognize, but knew belonged to him. They were parked by the edge of the ocean in deep sand on a familiar beach near their vacation cottage on the Cape. It had seemed to Ricky in the dream that the gray-green Atlantic waters, the color they took on in anticipation of a storm, were sweeping ever closer to him, threatening to overtake the car in a flood tide, and he struggled madly to open the door, but when he tried to work the handle he had seen a bloodstained and grinning Zimmerman standing outside the car, holding the door closed, and he’d been trapped inside. The car would not start and somehow he knew the tires were dug down into the sand anyway. In the dream, his dead wife had seemed calm, beckoning, almost welcoming him, and he’d had little trouble interpreting all this, as he stood naked in the shower, letting lukewarm water that was neither warm nor cold flow over his head in a mildly unpleasant cascade, but one that fit his dreary mood.

  Ricky dressed in faded, ratty, khaki trousers that were frayed at the cuffs and which showed all the signs of longtime use that teenagers would ordinarily have paid extra for at the mall, but which in his case were the results of years of wear and tear during the summer vacation, the only time he wore them. On his feet he placed an equally tattered pair of boat shoes and over his torso an old blue button-down shirt too worn for wear anytime other than the weekend. He dragged a comb through his hair. He looked up at his face in the mirror and thought he wore all the outward appearances of a man of accomplishments dressing down for the beginning of his vacation. He thought how for years he had awoken on the first of August and gleefully put on the old and comfortable battered clothes that signaled that for the next month he was stepping away from the carefully constructed and regimented character of the Upper East Side Manhattan psychoanalyst and into something different. Vacation was defined by Ricky as a time to get his hands dirty in the garden up in Wellfleet, to get some sand between his toes on long walks down the beach, to read popular mystery or romance novels and drink the occasional disgusting concoction called the Cape Codder, an unfortunate marriage of cranberry juice and vodka. This vacation promised no such return to routine, even though, in something he might have characterized as stubbornness, or maybe wishful thinking, he was dressed for the first day of the holiday.

  He shook his head and dragged himself into the small kitchen. For breakfast, he made himself a solitary slice of dry wheat toast and some black coffee which tasted bitter no matter how many spoonfuls of sugar he dropped in. He chewed the toast with an indifference that surprised him. He had absolutely no appetite.

  He carried his rapidly cooling coffee into his office where he put Rumplestiltskin’s letter on the desk in front of him. Occasionally he would sneak a glance out the window, as if he hoped to catch a glimpse of the naked Virgil lurking on the sidewalk, or occupying a window from an apartment in the building across the narrow street. He knew she was somewhere close, or, at least, believed her to be, based on what she had told him.

  Ricky shuddered once, involuntarily. He stared at the words of the clue.

  For a moment, he felt a dizziness mingled with a flash of heat.

  “What is happening?” he demanded of himself out loud.

  Roger Zimmerman seemed to enter the room at that moment, as irritating and demanding in death as he was in life. As always, he wanted answers to all the wrong questions.

  He dialed the dead man’s apartment number again, hoping to reach someone. Ricky knew he was obliged to speak with someone about Zimmerman’s death, but precisely who, eluded him. The mother was still inexplicably unaccounted for, and Ricky wished he’d had the sense to ask Detective Riggins where the woman was. He guessed with some neighbor, or in a hospital. Zimmerman had a younger brother who lived in California with whom he’d connected infrequently. The brother worked in the film industry in Los Angeles and had wanted nothing to do with taking care of the difficult and partially invalided mother, a reluctance that had caused Zimmerman to complain constantly about him. Zimmerman had been a man who reveled in the awfulness of his life, preferring to whine and complain than to change. It was this quality that made him such a poor candidate for suicide, Ricky thought. What the police and his coworkers had seen as despair, Ricky had recognized as Zimmerman’s true and only joy. He lived for his hates. Ricky’s task as analyst was to empower him with the ability to change. He had expected the time to eventually arrive when Zimmerman would have realized how crippled he actually was, traveling impotently from anger to anger. That moment when change was possible would have been dangerous, because Zimmerman would likely have fallen into a significant depression at the idea that he didn’t need to lead his life in the way that he did. He would have been vulnerable then when the number of wasted days finally occurred to him. That understanding conceivably might have created a real and possibly lethal despair.

  But that moment had been many months, and in greater likelihood, years away.

  Zimmerman still had arrived at his session daily, still considering analysis to be nothing more than a fifty-minute venting opportunity, like a steam whistle on the side of an engine waiting for the conductor’s tug. What little insight he’d gained he mostly used to pave new avenues of anger.

  Complaining was fun for him. He wasn’t boxed in and encircled by despair.

  Ricky shook his head. In twenty-five years, he’d had three patients who killed themselves. Two of those had been referred to him already displaying all the classic warning signs and had been in treatment only briefly before taking their own lives
. He had felt helpless on those occasions, but a helplessness that didn’t carry blame. The third death, however, he did not like to think about because the person had been a longtime patient, whose downward spiral Ricky had been unable to arrest, even with prescriptions for mood elevators, a course he rarely took. It had been years since he’d thought of that patient, and he had not liked mentioning him to Detective Riggins, even if he had withheld the details of the case from the rude and only mildly inquisitive detective.

  Shuddering briefly, as if the room had suddenly grown cold, Ricky thought: That was a portrait of suicide. Zimmerman wasn’t.

  But the idea that Zimmerman was pushed in front of a subway train to send Ricky a message was far more horrifying. It struck at his heart. It was the sort of idea that was like a spark landing in a pool of gasoline.

  It was, equally, an impossible idea. He envisioned himself walking back into Detective Riggins’s overbright and modestly filthy office and claiming that some strangers had deliberately murdered a person they didn’t know and didn’t care about in the slightest in order to force Ricky into playing some sort of death game.

  He thought: It’s true, but not believable, especially to some underpaid and overworked Transit Authority detective.

  And, in the same moment, he realized that they knew that.

  The man who called himself Rumplestiltskin and the woman who went by Virgil understood that there was no hard evidence whatsoever that might connect them to this random crime other than Ricky’s bleating protests. Even if Detective Riggins didn’t laugh Ricky out of her office—which she would—what incentive did she have to pursue a wild story from a physician whom she quite accurately believed would far prefer some crazy mystery novel explanation for the man’s death rather than the obvious suicide that reflected so poorly on him?

  He could answer that query with a single word: None.

  Zimmerman’s death was designed to help kill Ricky. And no one would know it, except Ricky.

  The thought made him dizzy.